VILLAGES TO ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE, poetry by Ezequiel Naya, translated by Sam Simon
Publication Date: September 30, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-81-3
Author, educator, and translator Sam Simon has made it a mission to bring the work of Argentine author Ezequiel Naya to the attention to an English-language audience. Of this translation of Pueblos para escapar de la justicia, he notes the current of dread that courses through Naya’s poems, “connecting an unnamed past with an unknowable future, highlighting the uneasiness of those trading instability for unfamiliarity.” His title alone is provocative, evoking tensions of conformity and community, of freedom and transgression. Set anywhere in Latin America (or beyond), “The collection explores the double-pronged mythology of nation-building and the desecration of those same countries, of the folklore and stories that both drive us towards war and help us survive it.” In poems titled only by letter, as if an outline for a larger agenda, Naya admits “I want to be out of control, / like a feral animal,” for “Being conscious isn’t / enough to change anything.” “It’s difficult being a person” he tells his therapist, “and she points to the books that already talked about that.” So why write another: “To fill voids / they invented alcohol, / poetry and dogs. / That’s enough for me.” Through Simon’s fidelity to Naya’s program, here indeed is poetry to span the void, enough to enable escape into a possible better future.
Praise for Ezequiel Naya & Villages to Escape from Justice
The title of this book already strikes me as a brilliant poem. The poems that follow – like a line of people holding hands walking along a path in a psychedelic forest – only confirm that we are before a very singular poet. Love, humor, working together to make poetry change its skin and disturb us again, as it should. Ezequiel Naya is a poet difficult to trap in adjectives and university rhetoric: hence his great power.
—Fabián Casas
When writing is sincere, it needs someone. It calls for someone. It makes that which is coexist with what could be, light and shadow, to put it quickly: the living and the dead. Such are these prose and verse poems by Ezequiel Naya. It’s sincere writing because it includes, in what it says, bewilderment. He assures us that, sometimes, he does not even know what he is doing. He allows himself to talk about God and dogs and a dream of a mechanic’s shop. He tries to find the exact form of a farewell or memory while watering the plants. Naya writes and invents with the sensibility of a friend. With humor, with a colloquial tone that allows itself not to exclude transcendence, he offers something improbable, scarce these days: fresh eyes to be able to look at everything anew, accompanied.
—Santiago Craig
About the Author & Translator
Ezequiel Naya, Buenos Aires, trained as a writer in the workshops of Diego Paszkowski and Fabián Casas before graduating from the Literary Creation masters from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is the author of Fantasmas de Animales (2012), published by Corregidor. He is a co-founder of Lata Peinada in Barcelona and Madrid.
Sam Simon is a writer and translator from Oakland, California. He is an associate editor for the Barcelona Review and teaches creative writing at the Institute for American Universities in Barcelona. He is a co-founder and managing editor of Infrasonica.org, a digital platform dedicated to non-Western sonic art and cultures. His translation of Naya’s Ship of Dreams was published in Mayday Magazine in 2021. Other translations have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Gulf Coast Review, and his translation of Begoña Ugalde’s General Cemetery won the 2023 Summer/Fall Gabo Prize.
Publication Date: September 30, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-81-3
Author, educator, and translator Sam Simon has made it a mission to bring the work of Argentine author Ezequiel Naya to the attention to an English-language audience. Of this translation of Pueblos para escapar de la justicia, he notes the current of dread that courses through Naya’s poems, “connecting an unnamed past with an unknowable future, highlighting the uneasiness of those trading instability for unfamiliarity.” His title alone is provocative, evoking tensions of conformity and community, of freedom and transgression. Set anywhere in Latin America (or beyond), “The collection explores the double-pronged mythology of nation-building and the desecration of those same countries, of the folklore and stories that both drive us towards war and help us survive it.” In poems titled only by letter, as if an outline for a larger agenda, Naya admits “I want to be out of control, / like a feral animal,” for “Being conscious isn’t / enough to change anything.” “It’s difficult being a person” he tells his therapist, “and she points to the books that already talked about that.” So why write another: “To fill voids / they invented alcohol, / poetry and dogs. / That’s enough for me.” Through Simon’s fidelity to Naya’s program, here indeed is poetry to span the void, enough to enable escape into a possible better future.
Praise for Ezequiel Naya & Villages to Escape from Justice
The title of this book already strikes me as a brilliant poem. The poems that follow – like a line of people holding hands walking along a path in a psychedelic forest – only confirm that we are before a very singular poet. Love, humor, working together to make poetry change its skin and disturb us again, as it should. Ezequiel Naya is a poet difficult to trap in adjectives and university rhetoric: hence his great power.
—Fabián Casas
When writing is sincere, it needs someone. It calls for someone. It makes that which is coexist with what could be, light and shadow, to put it quickly: the living and the dead. Such are these prose and verse poems by Ezequiel Naya. It’s sincere writing because it includes, in what it says, bewilderment. He assures us that, sometimes, he does not even know what he is doing. He allows himself to talk about God and dogs and a dream of a mechanic’s shop. He tries to find the exact form of a farewell or memory while watering the plants. Naya writes and invents with the sensibility of a friend. With humor, with a colloquial tone that allows itself not to exclude transcendence, he offers something improbable, scarce these days: fresh eyes to be able to look at everything anew, accompanied.
—Santiago Craig
About the Author & Translator
Ezequiel Naya, Buenos Aires, trained as a writer in the workshops of Diego Paszkowski and Fabián Casas before graduating from the Literary Creation masters from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is the author of Fantasmas de Animales (2012), published by Corregidor. He is a co-founder of Lata Peinada in Barcelona and Madrid.
Sam Simon is a writer and translator from Oakland, California. He is an associate editor for the Barcelona Review and teaches creative writing at the Institute for American Universities in Barcelona. He is a co-founder and managing editor of Infrasonica.org, a digital platform dedicated to non-Western sonic art and cultures. His translation of Naya’s Ship of Dreams was published in Mayday Magazine in 2021. Other translations have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Gulf Coast Review, and his translation of Begoña Ugalde’s General Cemetery won the 2023 Summer/Fall Gabo Prize.
Publication Date: September 30, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-81-3
Author, educator, and translator Sam Simon has made it a mission to bring the work of Argentine author Ezequiel Naya to the attention to an English-language audience. Of this translation of Pueblos para escapar de la justicia, he notes the current of dread that courses through Naya’s poems, “connecting an unnamed past with an unknowable future, highlighting the uneasiness of those trading instability for unfamiliarity.” His title alone is provocative, evoking tensions of conformity and community, of freedom and transgression. Set anywhere in Latin America (or beyond), “The collection explores the double-pronged mythology of nation-building and the desecration of those same countries, of the folklore and stories that both drive us towards war and help us survive it.” In poems titled only by letter, as if an outline for a larger agenda, Naya admits “I want to be out of control, / like a feral animal,” for “Being conscious isn’t / enough to change anything.” “It’s difficult being a person” he tells his therapist, “and she points to the books that already talked about that.” So why write another: “To fill voids / they invented alcohol, / poetry and dogs. / That’s enough for me.” Through Simon’s fidelity to Naya’s program, here indeed is poetry to span the void, enough to enable escape into a possible better future.
Praise for Ezequiel Naya & Villages to Escape from Justice
The title of this book already strikes me as a brilliant poem. The poems that follow – like a line of people holding hands walking along a path in a psychedelic forest – only confirm that we are before a very singular poet. Love, humor, working together to make poetry change its skin and disturb us again, as it should. Ezequiel Naya is a poet difficult to trap in adjectives and university rhetoric: hence his great power.
—Fabián Casas
When writing is sincere, it needs someone. It calls for someone. It makes that which is coexist with what could be, light and shadow, to put it quickly: the living and the dead. Such are these prose and verse poems by Ezequiel Naya. It’s sincere writing because it includes, in what it says, bewilderment. He assures us that, sometimes, he does not even know what he is doing. He allows himself to talk about God and dogs and a dream of a mechanic’s shop. He tries to find the exact form of a farewell or memory while watering the plants. Naya writes and invents with the sensibility of a friend. With humor, with a colloquial tone that allows itself not to exclude transcendence, he offers something improbable, scarce these days: fresh eyes to be able to look at everything anew, accompanied.
—Santiago Craig
About the Author & Translator
Ezequiel Naya, Buenos Aires, trained as a writer in the workshops of Diego Paszkowski and Fabián Casas before graduating from the Literary Creation masters from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is the author of Fantasmas de Animales (2012), published by Corregidor. He is a co-founder of Lata Peinada in Barcelona and Madrid.
Sam Simon is a writer and translator from Oakland, California. He is an associate editor for the Barcelona Review and teaches creative writing at the Institute for American Universities in Barcelona. He is a co-founder and managing editor of Infrasonica.org, a digital platform dedicated to non-Western sonic art and cultures. His translation of Naya’s Ship of Dreams was published in Mayday Magazine in 2021. Other translations have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Gulf Coast Review, and his translation of Begoña Ugalde’s General Cemetery won the 2023 Summer/Fall Gabo Prize.